


between the heart and the skin is the ribs and the soul

by slackeuse



Category: Produce 101 (TV), Wanna One (Band)
Genre: M/M, a moment to remember au, alzeimer's disease, and i think it's like mostly fluff lol, angst y'all this is your warning it's angst, married!onghwang, powercouple!onghwang, sweet fluffy domestic onghwang designed to possibly maximize your heartbreak srynotsry, there's a meetcute though, there's some sexy bits too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 09:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15483177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slackeuse/pseuds/slackeuse
Summary: Minhyun and Seongwoo are in love and that should be enough.





	between the heart and the skin is the ribs and the soul

the darkest hour  
is just before the dawn,  
and that, i see,  
which does not guarantee  
power to draw the next breath,  
nor abolish the suspicion  
that the brightest hour  
we will ever see  
occurs just before we cease  
to be.  
\- the darkest hour by james baldwin

 

 

Seongwoo can’t say it was love at first sight, but he figures it probably was. He can’t remember.

 

 

Minhyun meets Seongwoo very sweetly at a convenience store.

Seongwoo had forgotten his wallet and the coke he’d bought inside, so he was heading back in. He nearly ran into Minhyun at the door. They moved together, in sync, trying to get around the other.

That’d been when Seongwoo saw it: the coke in Minhyun’s hand as he cracked it open. Seongwoo didn’t even bother to take the can out of Minhyun’s hand. He pressed his fingertips to the back of his hand and just gently guided the can to his lips and tipped, tipped, tipped it back until he finished off the whole thing like a monster.

Then he blew a lovely burp into Minhyun’s face. “Thanks.” He smiled. Stupid attractive asshole.

In that moment, Minhyun flinched back—from disgust, shock, pure and utter mortification—and Seongwoo slipped past him and back into the store. Where he’d probably found his own damn coke right next to his wallet on the counter.

Knowing Seongwoo, Minhyun guesses he’d made up some elaborate excuse for his dick behavior and repeated it like a mantra until he met Minhyun again a week later by chance. His favorite client Jihoon had told him his good friend had needed someone to help him find the perfect suit for an important business event. Minhyun had agreed to help and showed up to some huge mansion in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city.

There was a butler. There was an enormous walk-in closet that hosted probably more than a million dollars in clothes, accessories, and shoes. There was Seongwoo looking too dashing for his own good.

At some point, Seongwoo must’ve asked his assistant for a can of coke while Minhyun was distracted. It arrived on a gilded platter just as Seongwoo was slipping on yet another suit jacket (this one had been navy blue instead of midnight blue and had a matte finish). Minhyun didn’t even spare Seongwoo a glance as he grabbed it, opened it, and drank it all. Seongwoo didn’t even seem surprised when Minhyun innocently burped, smiled, and placed the empty can back on the platter.

“Refreshing,” he said. His attention found Seongwoo once again and he asked, “What do you think of the suit this time?”

“I like it,” Seongwoo said, grinning.

Minhyun returned it. “I like it, too.”

 

 

It doesn’t take long for them to start seeing each other. Seongwoo’s friends try to tell him that Minhyun will never be enough for him. He’s a design student buried in debt. He’s just a stylist to a few rich people because of his looks. He’s nothing and no one. Seongwoo defends him because he knows Minhyun is worth more, way more, so much more.

He graduates at the top of his class. He begins writing for _Vogue Korea_. He moves in with Seongwoo. Then he’s named fashion editor. They get engaged, married. Then he’s editor-in-chief.  And they are happy.

Seongwoo treats it as a giant _fuck you_ to every friend who’d thought Minhyun wasn’t good enough by subscribing each and every one of them to the magazine.

 

 

Minhyun is watching Seongwoo release stress by slamming metal to ball after ball after ball in the batting cage when he asks, “Do you think we’ll live happily ever after?”

Seongwoo pauses, looks at him in that way that just makes all his worries vanish. “I thought I was the hopeless romantic?” He chuckles and gestures Minhyun over.

At some point, Minhyun forgot how to resist, so he opens up the fence door to the batting cage and steps inside, finds his way to Seongwoo who leads him to just the right spot.

Then Seongwoo puts the bat into Minhyun’s hands and steps around him. He presses their bodies together and perfects Minhyun’s stance. “Keep your eye on the ball.”

“Don’t laugh.” He tightens his grip on the bat, takes a little breath to prepare himself.

“I’d never.”

Minhyun scoffs, but he’s smiling. “Liar.”

“It’s more like a false promise? Because it’s not like I ever _know for sure_ I’m going to laugh at you, but I also can’t necessarily control it if I _happen_ to laugh after all. So it’s a promise that’s impossible for me to keep that I still promise anyway because I’d promise you the moon and the sun and the stars and the whole damn fucking universe if you wanted it.” Seongwoo kisses the back of his neck. “Get ready, love. They come fast.”

Well, no shit.

It takes seven balls for Minhyun to hit one. He misses the first two probably because Seongwoo’s voice echoes in his head and his cheeks are too warm and his heart is beating way too quickly despite the fact that they should be way past the heart fluttering bullshit. But by the time he hits that ball, he doesn’t care anymore if there’s a happily ever after. He likes whatever this is and he loves that certainty.

He will never forget this moment.

 

 

They are in love.

Nothing matters to them but each other. They are past love. They are past _I want you_. They breathe for each other, live for each other. Seongwoo for Minhyun’s soft smiles and Minhyun for Seongwoo’s bright laughter. With entwined fingers, they connect heart to heart, soul to soul, being to being.

 

 

They’re scrapbooking. Memories, Seongwoo had told Minhyun once, are very important. Minhyun figures he cherishes them so much because he forgets things so often. He likes this side of him, the side of him that’s not all business, not all put together, not all rich heir who successfully took over the multimillion-dollar family business and turned it into a trillion-dollar family business.

Seongwoo is puting on the cap to the glue stick when he blinks suddenly. He looks up, around. Frowns. He stands up, then starts floating around the house. Minhyun follows him from room to room as he opens doors, opens cupboards, opens windows, until he finally opens the front door and looks outside. Minhyun’s about to reach out to him, but he finally turns around to face him.

“Oh,” Seongwoo says. He smiles. “There you are. Where were you?”

Minhyun closes the front door, says nothing but wears a smile. They head back to the room they were in as Seongwoo describes his journey around the house trying to find him. He sits back down at the table. Minhyun does not.

Seongwoo’s eyes ghost around the mess on the table until they settle on the page he was just working on. “Did you glue this for me?” he asks.

 _No_ , Minhyun wants to answer, _you glued that yourself before you got up._

“Well, shit,” Seongwoo says before Minhyun can come up with something else to say. “That was sweet of you. It’s like you love me or something.” He chuckles.

Minhyun smiles. “I do.” He places a hand on Seongwoo’s neck. He will never forget the feeling he has when he sees in Seongwoo’s eyes complete confusion as if he didn’t realize Minhyun was there, even if it’s just for a split second.

 

 

Seongwoo traces the outlines of Minhyun’s ribs. He thinks that if he touches him enough in all the right places, maybe, just maybe, he'll finally commit to memory how to touch his heart. But no matter how many times he brushes his fingers across Minhyun’s soft skin, he starts to forget just how to dig deep enough into his skin. 

 

 

Seongwoo comes home late from a business trip and Minhyun watches him hesitantly walk into the kitchen because it’s supposed to be a surprise. The kitchen. It’s new. It’s expensive and decadent like before, but it’s white and marble and sleek and perfect for cooking. A show of new, fresh life so Seongwoo can finally breathe. It's supposed to tell him there’s nothing to worry about, life will always be perfect.

So he doesn’t move from the kitchen entrance as Seongwoo looks around. Minhyun ignores the tightness of the corner of Seongwoo's lips like he’s trying to keep himself from frowning. Minhyun wants to tell him _you’re home_. Not a welcome but a reminder.

He smiles, though. The warm one he always gives Minhyun when he misses him a lot.  “It’s… different,” Seongwoo says. “It’s different, right?”

The questioning lilt at the end is a tiny knife pain that is also ignored.

“I was a little busy while you were gone.” Minhyun stands. “This is the best part.” He flips on a switch for the ceramic stove top and it glows red underneath the glass. Although gas is better, this is best. “Now you won’t burn anything.” _Because you forgot you started to cook something and then nearly set the whole house on fire._

Seongwoo laughs. “And I thought it was fancy already. Wow. Look at all this.” He places a hand on the cold, shiny counter top and runs his palm over the surface. Then he touches all of the handles on the cupboards, opens them all, fascinated. He checks the drawers, notes that everything has been carefully—meticulously and thoughtfully—placed back exactly where it had been before. Then he hops onto the counter in front of Minhyun, slides over in front of him and straddles him. “It’s beautiful. Almost as beautiful as you. It’ll do.”

“I’m glad.” Minhyun kisses him. Leans against him so their bodies mold together. Seongwoo’s warm skin is a specific sort of calming. They stay like this for a while. “What’d the doctor say?”

Seongwoo traces a fingertip up Minhyun’s spine. “They told me to come back next week.” He wraps his arms around Minhyun’s shoulders and kisses his left cheek, right cheek, left temple, right temple, forehead, nose bridge.

“Didn’t they tell you that last time?”

He kisses the tip of his nose, his philtrum, his chin. “They did?”

 

  

Every so often, from time to time, now and again, now and then, once and again, ever so softly Seongwoo cries when Minhyun digs deep with a kiss to his chest and touches the most tender part of his soul.

Because Minhyun always kisses his soul.

Because Minhyun is his soul.

Because sometimes he forgets that, all of that, all of everything.

Because Minhyun cries sometimes, too, wondering what he’s doing wrong to make Seongwoo cry when the real reason Seongwoo is crying is because he’d always been taught love is supposed to mend you, not tear you apart.

 

 

Minhyun visits the doctor when Seongwoo returns again and again saying they’d only told him to come back next week. He should’ve come sooner.

“You told him all of this?” he asks, and he hates that he can’t control the waver in his voice but everything in him is breaking and crumbling all at once.

“Yes.”

“And you’re sure?”

“I’m sorry.” There’s a long silence. “I gave him this advice as well: let go. You should let go.”

Minhyun leaves wishing doctors were forbidden from apologizing. It’s not the doctor's fault Seongwoo is lost. He didn’t pick Seongwoo. He didn’t create the future that’d been waiting for them, for him, predestined, written somewhere in the stars so far away that no one had seen it.

When he gets home, he expects Seongwoo to be the one waiting to hear what the doctor said. He’s not at home. Minhyun checks every room twice and then he tries to call him. No answer. So the next hour is calling everyone Minhyun can think of who might know where he went—his assistant, his office manager, his business partners, his friends, his parents—and driving everywhere he can think that Seongwoo might be.

He finds him at the batting cage, missing every ball. Missing and missing and missing until he throws the bat to the ground and kicks at the dirt. Minhyun steps inside the cage, wraps his arms around him. Seongwoo relaxes into him.

“He told you?”

 _Yes._ “Told me what?” He makes sure he’s smiling when Seongwoo turns around in his arms to face him.

“I’m not...” His eyes water. He glances away. “...I’m not going to be here.” He takes a half step away from Minhyun but not enough to escape his embrace. “Seems like the answer to your question is no. There’s no happily ever after for us. This isn’t going to work. Let’s just stop before you get any more hurt than I know you are. _I know you’re hurting_. I know you.”

“No.” Minhyun closes the distance between them. “You’re supposed to be the hopeless romantic. You’re supposed to tell me everything’s going to be fine.”

“It won’t be. And I told you I’d never lie. How could I tell you everything’s going to be fine when I’m not going to remember you, Minhyun? I’m not going to remember _me_. I can’t—I just fucking can’t let myself live a life where I’ve forgotten how to read all the ways you try to pretend you’re not hurting and that _I’m_ the reason you are. There is not a happy ending waiting for us.”

“I’ll remember you.” Minhyun slides his hands through Seongwoo’s hair, cradles the back of his head as he guides his head to his shoulder. “Seongwoo, I’ll be your memory. Every time you start to forget, I’ll be right there. Just like I am now. You will still be here. You will still _be_.”

Seongwoo starts shaking, trembling. He’s crying. Finally, he wraps his arms around Minhyun. “What, are you going to try to make me fall in love with you again? That’s some fucked up eternal dating shit and it’s totally romantic and all, but isn’t that just cruel?”

“You fell in love with me first.” He rubs small circles into Seongwoo’s back.

“Blasphemy.”

“You told me once I was your religion, so doesn’t that make my word the word of your god and therefore nothing I say can be blasphemous? Everything will be just fine.”

It’s a whisper when he says, “Now I’m the one who gets to call you a liar.”

“And I’m the one who gets to say blasphemy.”

Minhyun can’t recall a time he’s ever felt this entirely, utterly, completely hollow in his life because the words _everything will be just fine_ simply don’t work.

 

 

Alzheimer's disease

A common form of dementia of unknown cause, characterized by memory lapses, confusion, emotional instability, and progressive loss of mental ability.

It is not curable.

Once upon a time, Seongwoo thought his love was endless. Once upon a time, Seongwoo thought he'd always be enough.

 

 

 “What’s my birthday?” Minhyun quizzes in front of a fire, wrapped in a blanket in Seongwoo’s arms. He has Seongwoo’s pill bottles in front of him and he’s carefully organizing them into a pill case. This is all he can do for him, besides those three nights he spent writing down everything he could think of on post-it notes from how to use a toilet to  _close the door by placing your hand on the doorknob_ (with a drawing)  _and pulling toward yourself_. He labeled everything, including pictures, objects, where things go, where things don't go.

 

There’s a long enough pause that Minhyun is glad he can’t see Seongwoo’s face. “August?” he starts, “ninth?”

“The year?”

“Nineteen…ninety…” The pause that follows is longer than the first and each moment contributes to the hundreds, thousands, millions of seoncds that are slowly breaking Minhyun’s heart. But he still remembers who he is and that’s all that matters. “Six?”

Close enough.

“My name?”

“Hwang Minhyun.” He chuckles as if it was a silly question.

“Your name?”

“Ong Seongwoo. Not Hong, but Ong Seongwoo. Not Gong, but Ong Seongwoo. Not Ung, but Ong Seongwoo. Not On Seongwoo, I’m Ong Seongwoo.”

That makes Minhyun smile. He offers up the pill case. “Today's Saturday.”

He watches to make sure Seongwoo opens the right section.

The doctor said the pills would slow down the memory loss, but that’s it. It’s like this every morning and every night. Sometimes it’s their address. Sometimes it’s the day they met. Minhyun’s favorite food. The color of the sky, the grass, the dirt, the sun. His age. The date. Sometimes Seongwoo remembers everything. Sometimes he can’t remember one thing. Sometimes it’s two. Sometimes he wakes up in the morning and Minhyun is sure Seongwoo has no idea who he is, where he is, who he’s promised to spend the rest of his life with.

Those days seem to be becoming more frequent. That look—confused, uncomfortable, afraid—lasts longer each time, too.

 

 

Seongwoo can’t remember their first kiss, but he remembers it to be…

A tidal wave sinking a rowboat ( _one minute you’re lying next to Minhyun in bed, snuggled close because it's cold and neither of you had enough energy to turn on the heat. He’s pressed against you but barely there, hands clenched together and grazing the small of your back while you’re tracing patterns on the skin that is petal soft between the top of his pajama bottoms and the gray of his scrunched up shirt. Minhyun’s fingertips grace your skin like a firefly, warm and gentle, tickling but it feels good. Then, suddenly, everything starts pouring out of you and you move on top of him and Minhyun is grinding underneath you as you try to breathe his lips and drink his moans_ ).

Being hanged from a bridge over calm water ( _Minhyun slides next to you on the couch, smooths his fingers over your cheek, and presses his lips to yours. Your eyes close as he slides onto your lap, grinding into you. He slips his tongue next to yours, his fingers in your hair. When you are breathless, he rises from you, whispers in your ear like a bridge, lips a river, body like a million pieces of sharp, dangerous rocks seeking blood and injury. You can taste it melting down your throat_ ).

Drowning to find damnation at the bottom of the sea ( _three months and you don't know what to think. Quiet afternoons warming each other in the dark, talking each other to sleep. You don’t realize when he runs a hand down your front or when he wraps strong arms around you but every touch sends you falling deeper in love with him. Unimaginably. He’s crying in the corner, hiding his face from you, and even when you press firm kisses on the top of his head, his forehead, his arms, his shoulders, his fingers, he won't let go of you. You never imagined that he’d be so unhappy when he is all the happiness you’ve ever known. Even trapped in his tornado of hurt, it feels like home_ ).

So Seongwoo decides it's just not worth it, that it's better that Minhyun holds Seongwoo’s heart in able hands. That their first kiss is all of the above because if he can’t fucking remember then every kiss is their first kiss and he cherishes each one that much more because of it.

 

 

Seongwoo passes off oversight of his company, stays home and convinces Minhyun that he will do all the chores. Minhyun knows better. Seongwoo does send him off to work with lunch every day, freshly made. Seongwoo generally cooks well and it’s better than buying.

But more times than not, Seongwoo sends him with rice. Rice and only rice because he’d forgotten that he’d already packed it.

 

  

Seongwoo keeps a journal that Minhyun doesn’t know about. Or at least he didn’t tell himself that Minhyun knew about it, so he probably doesn’t know about it. Every morning after Minhyun has gone to work, he reads everything he’s written so he can remember. Some days he doesn’t remember anything for ten minutes, twenty minutes. Some days it takes hours.

On those days, his entries always start with _I can’t say it’s love at first sight, but I figure it must be. Must’ve been. Minhyun is beautiful. Too fucking beautiful for words._

 

 

Minhyun tells Seongwoo he’ll be home early when in reality he took the day off. He meets with Seongwoo’s doctor, who listens to Minhyun tell him what Seongwoo is forgetting. The doctor just tells him he should let Seongwoo live with his family, people he won’t forget so easily. After all, it’s the new memories that go first.

He wishes he’d met Seongwoo earlier. He’d do anything to spend more time with him.

“I gave you this advice already, but I think it bears repeating. Just let go.”

“No.”

The doctor sighs. They finish up their conversation quickly. 

When Minhyun gets home, the front door is open. He doesn’t quite know what to expect and enters slowly. Jihoon is inside, and Seongwoo is hugging him. It clicks—suddenly, painfully—that Seongwoo might have forgotten him.

“Jihoon,” Seongwoo calls softly as they embrace and it’s the way that he says it that makes Minhyun break a little more.

“You’re confused, hyung,” Jihoon says, sighs. “I love you, too, but not that way. And you don’t either. We’re way past that.”

Minhyun drops his jacket and his lunchbox on the kitchen counter. At the sudden sound, they both turn toward him. Seongwoo steps in front of Jihoon as if to protect him, as if Minhyun is the unwelcome one, as if he’s the stranger in this home, as if he’s the one intruding.

“Seongwoo hyung. Thank fuck. Please help. _Help him_.”

This is, of course, not what it looks like. Of course he knows Seongwoo has just forgotten him, has forgotten that he and Jihoon broke up seven years ago, that they’re now just really close friends who sometimes drink too much and do crazy shit, that Jihoon is now married to his childhood best friend. Minhyun wants to not care, though.

He wants to hurt Jihoon even though he loves him, too. He nearly owes his entire career to Jihoon and the charms that allowed his rich ass to be almost every other rich ass’s favorite manic pixie dream boy. He wants to beat him bruised and bloody, but he knows what he really wants to fight is much bigger than Jihoon. He’s fighting Seongwoo’s disease. He’s fighting Seongwoo’s slow death. He’s fighting the inevitability of it all.

He walks over to them, envelops them both in his arms.

“Oh, god. Minhyun.” He wishes those were Seongwoo’s words, but it’s Jihoon. He doesn’t even care that he dropped the hyung because it’s just nice to hear someone say his name. It’s nice to hear it and imagine it’s Seongwoo calling for him. Jihoon whispers harshly, “You have to hold it together, hyung. If you don’t have hope, how will he?”

“If you don’t have hope,” Minhyun counters, “how will I?”

“Fuck. Hyung.” Jihoon pulls him even closer. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Hearing Jihoon apologize is almost as frustrating as hearing the doctor apologize, but his hug is firm and real and full of an understanding that Seongwoo will soon never have.

 

 

Seongwoo wakes up one morning between his own sheets in his own room and he knows who he is and he knows what he forgot yesterday and the day before and the day before that. This clarity is a sharp knife’s edge into his heart because Minhyun is sleeping beside him as if nothing has changed, as if he won’t wake up and worry that Seongwoo isn’t going to remember him. It takes everything Seongwoo has not to cry, but tears would just make it harder to watch the man he loves sleeping peacefully.

Eventually, Minhyun wakes up. As soon as their gazes meet, he knows. He smiles, that fucking ethereal smile that stole his heart a long ass time ago.

“You’re already awake,” he says, sleep rasping in his voice still.

“I love you,” Seongwoo says. “I love you with everything I have. Always. Even if I don’t remember it, I do. I promise.”

He expects Minhyun to call him a liar, but he doesn’t. “I love you, too. No matter what. Always. Forever.”

 

 

Seongwoo’s parents visit. They’re in what used to be Seongwoo’s in-home conference room. Minhyun had prepared himself for this conversation. Or at least he thought he had.

“He’ll lose the ability to walk, to speak even,” Seongwoo’s father says across the table. The table is big and wood and glossy in a way that catches the light in sparkles. “You’re too young to handle this. Let us take care of him.”

“No.”

Seongwoo’s mother’s face twists in something like sympathy or agony or something vaguely hurt yet supportive. “You don’t have to go through this alone, honey.”

“The answer is no.”

Before Seongwoo’s father can respond, Seongwoo opens the door. He looks confused, like maybe he’s looking for something and isn’t sure if this is where it is. He smiles, though, when he sees his parents. It’s a smile that grows as urine runs smooth down his leg.

Minhyun jumps to his feet first. Rage, uncontrollable anger at the whole fucking situation floods his entire body in fire as he gently pushes Seongwoo back into the hallway. Then he picks him up and carries him bridal-style, flinching against memories of their wedding night.

Once in the bathroom, Minhyun drops to his knees and starts taking off his pants. “Let’s get you cleaned up, yeah?”

Seongwoo watches him, a look on his face that tells Minhyun he’s not quite sure what’s going on but that he trusts him.

Minhyun doesn’t want to ask—he’s afraid of the answer—but he needs to know. “What’s your name?”

“Ong Seongwoo?”

Standing now, Minhyun picks him up again and brings him to the bath, sets him on the edge so he can get the water temperature right before he puts him in. “What’s my name?”

Seongwoo studies his face, looks deeply into Minhyun’s eyes as if trying to read the name that Minhyun chants in his mind. _Please remember me. Please remember me. I’m Hwang Minhyun. Minhyun. Minhyun. I’m Minhyun._

“Min…hyuk…?” he says but seems like he’s not sure.

It’s good enough because what he sees in his eyes is knowing, a vague but powerful kind of knowing. He still knows who Minhyun is.

 

 

He’s alone outside when a memory hits him. He remembers being outside like this with someone before. A man. He remembers being on top of him, chuckling as he complained about the grass tickling his ears, the back of his neck. Then he’s unbuttoning the man’s shirt, kissing a wet trail down his chest.

“Someone’ll catch us,” the man says. “I swear to god you want someone to catch us. You’re always trying to do this in places we could get caught.”

“Swear to yourself,” Seongwoo says, laughing against his nipple because they’ve never been caught and Minhyun just likes to complain and complain and complain. “You’re my religion.”

“Your religion? Where did that even come from?”

Minhyun. That’s his name.

The sun beats down on his skin, so very, very hot, but it’s nothing compared to the heat tempting him to tease lower than Minhyun’s tender abdomen. His tongue dips into his bellybutton, lips feathery light until he’s squirming against the dirt and twigs and rocks trapped beneath his spine.

“Do you know what summertime smells like?” Seongwoo murmurs from between Minhyun’s legs as he slides his pants and underwear down his thighs, over his knees. “Because that’s what you smell like. What you taste like. Summertime. A sun god. My sun god. My Minhyun.”

Minhyun buries his fingers into Seongwoo’s hair and sighs to the blue sky.

“I like it—the smell of summertime. The smell of you. The taste of you. You.”

“Me?”

“Minhyun, I’m in love with you.”

It comes back to Seongwoo now. All of it. For the first time, he doesn’t cry because he doesn’t deserve it. He’ll forget. Minhyun won’t, though.

Minhyun doesn’t forget.

“Please say that to my face and not my dick and I promise I’ll say it back,” he’d said back then, a soft smile on his face. The smile he gave Seongwoo when he asked him to marry him. The smile he gave Seongwoo when he said _I do_. The smile he’s given Seongwoo every day he can remember since this memory.

“Later.” Seongwoo had grinned and locked eyes with him, didn’t even care that Minhyun’s attention felt like it was digging into his skin, into his soul.

It was. It was searching for what made Seongwoo irrevocably and unquestionably Seongwoo and he made space for it in _his_ soul. He remembers for both of them. He loves for both of them. This is how Minhyun has kept going.

 

  
Seongwoo finishes packing Minhyun’s lunch in the morning and then holds out his suit jacket for him. He gives him a small kiss on the cheek. “I love you, Jihoon. Have a good day. Charm the fuck out of someone for me, yeah?”

Minhyun chokes on his breath but smiles. “You, too.”

When he’s out of the door, he lets his eyes water. He calls in sick to work and goes to the doctor instead. The doctor just laughs at him.

“The new memories,” he repeats himself, “are the first to go.”

Minhyun doesn’t know why he’s here. He doesn’t know why he’s telling the doctor all of this. He most certainly does not know why he asks the doctor, “But who does he really love?”

The doctor doesn’t answer because he’s the biggest dick of them all. He picks at his nails. “It gets worse, kid.”

He goes back home. The least he can do is try to help Seongwoo remember. He should’ve corrected him when he called him Jihoon. How hard would that have been? Maybe he would’ve had to do some explaining, but it would’ve been fine. Doesn’t he have that little book of his? Maybe he didn’t read it this morning. There has to be something he can do.

He’s too late, though. There’s a letter waiting for him, folded haphazardly and sitting in plain view on the kitchen counter and he can barely read it through his tears, barely hear Seongwoo’s voice in his head over his open-mouthed sobs as he reads it.

_Minhyun,_

_I was scared I’d forget again. I have to tell you this before I forget again. I love you so much. I love you, Hwang Minhyun, born August 9, 1995. Hwang Minhyun, 181cm tall. Hwang Minhyun, blood type B. Hwang Minhyun, my religion, my summertime, my sun god._

_I will forget you again. Again and again and again. But I cannot ever really forget you because you live inside my heart and my soul. You are my heart. You are my soul. I live for you. I breathe for you. I smile for you. I laugh for you. My smile is your smile. My laugh is your laugh. My breath is your breath. My life is your life._

_I just wish this wasn’t the life we had. I am so sorry. I’m so sorry, love. I don’t want to forget. I don’t want to forget me or you or us. I can’t keep doing this to you._

_I have to leave, Minhyun._

_This is for both of us._

_I won’t come back. Don't look for me._

_All my love,_

_Ong Seongwoo_

 

This time it’s Minhyun who doesn’t remember. He loses time after he finishes the letter. Doesn’t know how long he cries, how long he’s a broken mess on the kitchen floor. Doesn’t know how he gets into pajamas, into bed. Doesn’t know how many days he’s lost to the world, but what even is his world without Seongwoo in it?

 

 

Their first kiss goes like this. Minhyun wraps his arms around Seongwoo’s shoulders playfully and smiles into his neck from behind. Seongwoo scoffs, tries to move away, but it’s an act and this must’ve been the precise moment Minhyun sees it for what it is. He holds tight and chuckles briefly into his hair. Seongwoo turns his head, stretches his neck, places a hand on Minhyun’s cheek to adjust his face to his own. They kiss almost like silk sheets, soft skin, and Seongwoo watches Minhyun close his eyes like they’re newly fallen petals. Minhyun won’t let go and Seongwoo won’t ask him to.

 

 

It’s a month later when Minhyun gets another letter.

 

_Minhyun, my love,_

_I remembered you again. I remember you. I hate this. I hate this so much. I remember the store, the coke. I remember our house, our room, our bed, our bodies warm pressed together. I had to write this before I forgot again just to tell you I love you._

_I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you._

_Please don’t look for me._

Minhyun ignores the last line this time for the sake of his own sanity.

It takes him half a day to find the right place. Some vacation home his father had bought well before Minhyun and Seongwoo had met. When he gets there, a nurse shows him into Seongwoo’s room, points to a picture of them that is taped to his vanity mirror and tells him it’s the only one he didn’t rip up. Then the nurse ushers him outside to a veranda facing the ocean where he’s absentmindedly drawing with pencil.

“You have a visitor,” she announces.

Seongwoo takes a moment, then turns to the nurse, then to Minhyun, then back to the nurse as if asking _who’s this_. Minhyun tries not to let himself feel hurt by the fact that Seongwoo looks fine, looks healthy, looks maybe even happy. Without him. Without them.

Because business cordiality is ingrained in him, Seongwoo stands to greet him. The notebook he was drawing in flops in a series of scribbles, scribbles, a face, a detailed face to the ground. They’re Minhyun. All of them. He apologizes and bends down for it, but Minhyun is faster. He offers it up.

“Here you go,” he says. “I’m Hwang Minhyun.”

Seongwoo flashes a business smile. “My nurse told me I’m Ong Seongwoo today. It’s nice to meet you.”

They shake hands, bow. The nurse looks sad for him. It’s probably always sad to see this. She asks if he’d like to stay for lunch, and he accepts. Seongwoo doesn’t look like he cares or even remembers that Minhyun is there.

A table is set up outside. They talk about the weather, the birds, the view. They talk about drawing. Minhyun knows the nurse is attempting to lead Seongwoo. He’s mid-bite when he pauses, looks like maybe he’s searching for something in his memory somewhere. Minhyun’s heart painfully jumps into his chest although he doesn’t want to be anxious, doesn’t want to hope.

“I…” Seongwoo’s eyes look like they’re watering. This is what it looks like when he can’t remember.

“Yes?” the nurse urges.

Seongwoo gives her a gentle smile, already forgotten. He eats more. When his gaze lands on Minhyun again, he gives him a look of concern. “Why’re you crying?”

Minhyun forces a smile, forces himself to pretend he wasn’t crying, that nothing ever happened. After all, Seongwoo won’t remember. He asks the nurse, “Is he allowed to go on a trip?”

 

 

Seongwoo is with the lady who calls herself his nurse, walking down a street to a convenience store. He doesn’t remember why they’re going there. There’s something prickling the back of his neck, that feeling he gets when he thinks he might be forgetting something. Usually it’s his name, but right now he’s mostly sure he’s Ong Seongwoo.

“Would you get me a coke?” his nurse asks. “I’m going to make a call real quick.”

“Sure.” He goes to open the door, but a ridiculously attractive asshole stands in his way. Seongwoo tries to maneuver around him, but either their strategies for avoiding other people are exactly the same or this ass is trying to get in his way.

A crack draws Seongwoo’s attention to the can of coke in the man’s hand. That prickle comes back, slithers down his spine. He looks at the man, then back to the coke. A sense of déjà vu. Maybe it’s because he’s supposed to be getting a coke for the nurse. His fingertips are touching the slick side of the can before he can stop himself. He feels like he’s been here before like this, a man in his way, a can of coke in a hand that didn’t belong there.

Since the man seems frozen now, Seongwoo finally manages to breeze past him into the store. There’s a wallet and a coke left in front of the cashier. His wallet. His coke. But shouldn’t his wallet be in his pocket? And he hadn’t bought a coke yet, right? So why would he think that coke is his?

But it is his. He _knows_ it’s his. He left them. He’d walked in, grabbed a coke and his favorite forbidden snacks and then he’d fucking forgotten them inside because he'd been too excited about the snacks. So he’d come back to grab them and this absolutely stunning douche of a man had stolen it and tried to drink it right in front of him, so he’d stolen it back. And then burped in his face after drinking it all in one go.

“Minhyun," he says and he's not sure where it comes from until he's left his lips.

They are in each other’s arms in a moment. Everything slams back to Seongwoo. Their first meeting. Their second meeting. Their first date. Their first kiss. Their first time having sex. The first time they said _I love you_. Their engagement. Their wedding. Their wonderful, blissful, perfect marriage. The Alzheimer’s that destroyed it.

Seongwoo kisses all over Minhyun’s face. “Stop it. I told you not to. Why do you do this to yourself? Why are you doing this to yourself? Why won’t you live without me? Please, Minhyun. _Please_.”

Minhyun is not crying. He cups Seongwoo’s jaw in his hands. “You are my life. I can’t live without you.”

“I’m supposed to be the romantic one, you idiot.”

“I’m not leaving until you do.”

“I’m nowhere near dying though.”

“Then I guess you’re going to keep seeing me for a while. I love you, Ong Seongwoo. And as long as you still love me, then we’re good. Everything is all right. Just let me visit you when I want. I’m just asking for a few hours. You don’t even need to remember me every time, and don’t you dare promise me you will.”

“It’s not all fine. It’s not okay. And you know I won’t make promises I can’t keep. But fuck if I don’t love you and hate you and love you.”

Seongwoo does not release his hand the entire drive back. He does not like watching Minhyun leave, but he knows he’ll forget anyway, and so there’s no use crying. Instead, he decides he’ll look forward to the next time he remembers.

 

 

∞

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this one for a different fandom when i was probably 18 or 19? i never forgot it. it was probably my favorite thing i wrote for that fandom lol so i decided to try to find it again and somehow i did? so i fixed some of it up, added other bits and pieces from other lost old fics, and changed it a bit too. hopefully it didn't disappoint … ?
> 
> if it did you can find me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/slackeuse) or [cc](https://curiouscat.me/slackeuse) lol


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